13th Amendment Essay

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In the year of 1865, the 13th Amendment was passed by Congress. This Amendment formally abolished slavery within the United states. This ratification was the final consent to considering the Three-Fifths compromise obsolete; A compromise that was relevant for many years reforming the idea of how the slave count should be considered into the population of the United States. Not only did this Amendment shatter the idea of giving slave three-fifths of a count toward the population, this was the first formal movement towards giving slaves an identity. Although, it wasn’t until the Fourteenth Amendment that slaves were defined as citizens. The Thirteenth amendment was the beginning of a developing chapter in History. During the constitutional …show more content…

The Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution (1787) article goes into detail about The Northern States simply laughing at this idea because they would only count the slaves into their population upon it benefitting them as they all knew slaves were not held at an equal standard. They figured that if slaves didn’t have rights then how could they be counted into the population that would decide the percentile of representation upon the States. Although, this would have given them a Tax break, it would have been an unfair advantage in the House of Representatives. This was merely a selfish act upon the Southern states to gain a totaling advantage of about thirty percent or possibly even more. We should not have allowed the compromise basing it off the want for more power as they had denied the slaves the power of humanity already. The slaves had less dignity with this reformed clause in effect considering even given the allowance to vote they would be held up in the process because they were illiterate and did not have money to put toward the taxes on the polls. The attempt to acknowledge slaves as less than a single person was two steps back for ethical humanity in the U.S. Luckily, the thirteenth and fourteenth along with many other amendments has gotten us to where we are

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